This document was submitted
by the Perth Group (www.theperthgroup.com)
as part of the Internet debate that took place as a preamble to the
Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel meeting held in Johannesburg in July 2000.

In “The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS” (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm)
one reads:“Nearly everybody with AIDS
has antibodies to HIV…numerous studies from around the world show that
virtually all AIDS patients are HIV-seropositive; that is they carry antibodies
that indicate HIV infection”.The
relationship between a positive antibody test and AIDS is said to prove that
HIV is the cause of AIDS.

There is no doubt that many, if not all, AIDS patients, at least in the
USA, Europe and Australia, have a positive
antibody test.However, there is no
agreement as to whether these tests “indicate HIV infection".For example, the packet insert for the Axsym system (HIV-1/HIV-2) manufactured by Abbott
Laboratories includes the words “At present there is no recognized standard for
establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood”.1This contradicts the above-mentioned NIH
document which reads:

“MYTH:HIV
antibody testing is unreliable.

FACT:Diagnosis of infection using antibody testing
is one of the best-established concepts in medicine.HIV antibody tests exceed the performance of
most other infectious disease tests…Current HIV antibody tests have sensitivity
and specificity in excess of 98% and are therefore extremely reliable”.2, 3

COMMENTARY

It is
incomprehensible how a body of scientists at the National Institutes for Health
in the US could present both sides of a scientific debate as a
series of "MYTHS" and "FACTS". Especially without
providing the names of scientists who hold the opposing view or any citations
to enable the reader to investigate the matter himself. The only
conclusion one can make from this behaviour is that the NIH does not want their
readers to learn the full story.

Here we examine one very important
"FACT" and leave it up to the reader to make his own judgement as to
whether or not it is a “MYTH”.

FACT:THERE IS NO EVIDENCE A RETROVIRUS HAS BEEN
ISOLATED FROM THE TISSUES OF AIDS PATIENTS. HENCE THERE IS NO GOLD
STANDARD FOR ANTIBODY TESTING FOR "HIV" INFECTION AND NO PROOF A
RETROVIRUS CAUSES AIDS

To prove the specificity of an antibody test or any antibody antigen
reaction, one must:

(i)
perform the test in hundreds, if
not thousands, of individuals who are assumed to be infected;

(ii)perform the test in a control group
consisting of at least an equal number of individuals who are thought not to be
infected, but who are sick;

(iii)using the same samples prove the
existence of HIV by a test independent of the antigen-antibody reaction, that
is by using a gold standard for the reaction.

The only gold standard for the HIV antibody test is HIV itself, that is
HIV isolation (purification).At present
no such proof exists.4, 5Nowhere in the cited WHO 1998 reference can
one find a gold standard being used to prove the specificity of the antibody
test.All one can find there, as the
title indicates, “Comparative Evaluation of the Operational Characteristics of
Commercially Available Assays”, is a comparison between 34 HIV test kits
against “a panel of 595 human sera (prevalence 33.6% for HIV-1 and 10 % for
HIV-2), of which 192 were from Africa, 99 from Asia, 206 from Europe and 98
from South America.The panel included
332 HIV negative specimens and 203 sera positive for HIV-1 and 60 positive for
HIV-2 specimens. In addition the sensitivity of the HIV test kits is assessed
on 8 seroconversion panels from Boston Biomedica (BBI)”.In fact, they did not even use as a gold
standard what is at present considered to represent HIV isolation.

Currently, the reaction between an
antibody directed against Montagnier’s p24 and antigens in cultures is
considered proof for HIV isolation.Firstly, a reaction between an antibody and an antigen cannot be
considered proof for isolation of a retrovirus.Secondly, the reaction is totally non specific.In 1992, Jorg Shupbach, the principle author
of one of the first four 1984 papers published by Gallo's group on HIV
isolation, reported that the whole blood cultures of 49/60 (82%) of
"presumably uninfected but serologically indeterminate individuals and 5/5
seronegative blood donors were found positive for p24".6The
non-specificity of the p24 antigen test is so obvious that it is accepted by no
less an authority on HIV testing than Philip Mortimer and his colleagues from
the UK Public Health Laboratory Service, "Experience has shown that
neither HIV culture nor tests for p24 antigen are of much value in diagnostic
testing. They may be insensitive and/or non-specific".7Thirdly,
since this reaction is an antibody-antigen reaction itself, it cannot be used
as a gold standard for the antibody test.Even if one uses this reaction as a gold standard for the antibody test,
then the WHO data shows the specificity of the antibody test to be very low
indeed.In a large WHO study published in 1994, between 1992-93, 224 specimens were
collected in Brazil, Rwanda, Thailand and Uganda from asymptomatic "HIV positive"
individuals.Serostatus was first
confirmed in the country of origin and then at the "centralized
laboratories responsible for confirming serology, virus isolation, virus
expression, and distribution of reagents (George-Speyer-Hans
Chemotherapentisches Forschunginstitut (GSH) in Frankfurt, Germany; National
Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) in London, United
Kingdom,; and DAIDS/NIAID in Bethesda, Maryland, United States".In this WHO study, "of a total of 224
virus cultures, 83 were positive (Isolation rate=37%)".8

As in
the WHO reference, in Sloand et al3 no data is presented to prove the specificity of the HIV antibody
tests.It is only stated:“Antibodies to HIV-1 proteins, which develop
during the course of infection, include antibodies to viral core antigen (p24)
and antibodies to viral envelope proteins (gp120 and gp41).Antibodies to HIV-1 polymerase (p55) develop
later, if at all.The most widely used
test, the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), is used in conjunction
with a confirmatory test, the Western blot…Although there is variability
depending on the test kit used, up to 70% of the initially positive ELISA
results are not confirmed by the second ELISA.Samples that are repeatedly reactive by ELISA must then be confirmed
positive by a Western blot or equivalent test.This procedure enables separation by electrophoresis of individual viral
proteins, such as viral core (p24, p55 and p17) and envelope (gp120, gp160 and
gp41) proteins, into well-defined bands for use as HIV-1 antigen
standards.The separated bands are
transferred or “blotted” onto a nitrocellulose membrane that is cut into strips
and exposed to the serum sample.Serum
antibodies to the antigen standards are detected and characterised as discrete
coloured bands by use of antihuman antibody in conjugation with an enzyme, as
shown in Fig. 1.The diagnostic pattern
of bands identified in the Western blot is more specific than the ELISA for viral
antibodies”.

An antibody test, Western blot (WB),
cannot be used as a gold standard for another antibody test, ELISA.Just because in the WB the “viral” antigens
are separate, this is not proof that the WB is more specific than ELISA.Neither can the specificity of an antibody
test be determined by repeating the test, no matter how many times.Furthermore, at present there is no proof
that the “viral core (p24, p55 and p17) and envelope (gp120, gp160 and gp41)
proteins” or any other protein used in the ELISA or WB are HIV proteins.9,
10

According to Luc Montagnier the characterisation of proteins as HIV
proteins “demands mass production and purification [of the virus].It is necessary to do that.And there I should say that that partially
failed”.11In fact since the material which Montagnier et al used to characterise the “viral
core” protein, p24, did not even have retrovirus-like particles, much less
“purified” HIV, then one has no choice but to conclude that Montagnier and his
associates did not prove that p24 is an HIV protein.Neither has anybody else since.

When Djamel Tahi asked Montagnier
if Robert Gallo purified HIV, he replied:“Gallo ?…I don’t know if he really purified.I don’t believe so”.Like Montagnier, Robert Gallo and his colleagues
did not publish electron micrographs to show that their “purified” virus
contained retrovirus-like particles.Unlike
Montagnier el al who considered the protein of molecular weight 24,000 (p24) as
being the characteristic HIV proteins, Gallo et al considered a protein of molecular weight 41,000 (p41), which
is the molecular weight of actin, as the most specific HIV protein.The only proof they gave for this was its
banding at the density of 1.16gm/ml and reaction with the sera of AIDS
patients.

In a Franco-German study, publishedin 1997, the authors, which included Hans Gelderblom, pointed out that
although the 1.16gm/ml band, which is used for “biochemical and serological
analyses”, is “considered to contain a population of relatively pure virus
particles,…in none of the studies has the purity of the virus preparation been
verified”.5However, by 1997, ample evidence existed
which showedthat the 1.16gm/ml band
contains many cellular proteins including actin and myosin, the latter also an
ubiquitousprotein which has two light
chains of molecular weight 24,000 and 18,000.Evidence also exists that AIDS patients have antibodies to both actin
and myosin.12

Before 1987 the p120 and p160 bands could not be visualised in WB
strips.This was not unexpected since
according to the HIV experts p160 is present only in infected cells, not in
virus particles, and p120 to be present only in the particles’ knobs (spikes),
which are rapidly lost when the particles are released.Since the protein on the WB strips are
obtained from purified HIV particles which do not possess knobs13 210 (p120) then neither p120
nor p160 should be present.Nevertheless, in 1987, by modifying “blot preparation”, proteins of
molecular weights of 120,000 and 160,000 were found which reacted with patients
sera.14 306However, no amount of “blot preparation”
modification can create what is not already present.The explanation for the presence of these
bands was found in 1989 by researchers who showed that in the Western blot
strip, “the components visualised in the 120-160 kDa region do not correspond
to gp120 or its precursor but rather represent oligomers of gp41”.15 248It was also shown that the WB pattern
obtainedis dependent on many factors
including temperature and the concentration of sodium dodecyl sulphate used to
disrupt the “pure virus”.“Confusion
over the identification of these bands has resulted in incorrect conclusions in
experimental studies.Similarly, some
clinical specimens may have been identified erroneously as seropositive, on the
assumption that these bands reflected specific reactivity against two distinct
viral components and fulfilled a criterion for true or probable
positivity.The correct identification
of these bands will affect the standards to be established for Western blot
positivity:it may necessitate the
reinterpretation of published results”.16 773No notice was taken of these findings and
recommendations.

Definite proof that what is considered “purified” HIV, the 1.16 gm/ml
band contains neither retroviral proteins nor HIV was published in 1997.In that year, two papers were published in Virology with the first electron
micrographs of “purified HIV” obtained by banding the supernatant of “infected”
cultures in sucrose density gradients.One of the studies was by researchers from the AIDS Vaccine Program
SAIL, National Cancer Institute–Frederick Cancer Research
and Development, Frederick, Maryland, USA and the other by
researchers from France and Germany.4, 5The authors of both studies claimed their
“purified” material contain retrovirus-like particles and in fact that they
were HIV particles.But they admitted
that their material predominantly contained particles which were not viruses
but “mock virus”, that is “budding membrane particles frequently called
microvesicles”.Indeed, the caption to
one of the electron micrographs of the “purified” HIV reads:“Purified vesicles from infected H9 cells (a)
and activated PBMC (b) supernatants".It does not read “purified HIV”.In further experiments the supernatants from non-infected cultures were
also banded in sucrose gradients.They
claimed that the banded material from these cultures contained only
microvesicles, “mock virus” particles, but no particles with the morphology of
HIV.

No reason(s) is given, other than morphological, for why some of the
particles in the fractions from the “infected” cells are virus particles and
the others “mock virus”.As far as
morphology is concerned, none of the particles have all the morphological
characteristics attributed to HIV, or even retroviruses.

The minimum absolutely necessary but not sufficient condition to claim
that what are called “HIV-1 particles” are a retrovirus and not cellular
microvesicles is to show that the sucrose density fractions obtained from the
“infected” cells contain proteins which are not present in the same fractions
obtained from non-infected cells that is in the “mock virus”.However, the researchers from the USA have shown this
is not the case.The only difference one
can see in their SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis strips of “purified
virus” and “mock virus” is quantitative, not qualitative.This quantitative difference may be due to
many reasons including the fact that there were significant differences in the
history and the mode of preparation of the non-infected and “infected” H9 cell
cultures, in addition to the “infection”.A similar finding was reported by the same authors a few years earlier.17However, while in both studies the proteins
of molecular weight “near 42 kDa” (42,000) are labelled as “Actin” and“in the 30- to 40-kDa range” as “HLA DR”, all
the proteins with molecular weight higher than approximately 42,000 and lower
than approximately 30,000 are left unlabelled in the earlier paper.17In the 1997 study, three proteins of
molecular weight lower than 30.000 are labelled as p24CA, P17MA,
and p6/p7NC and are said to represent “major bands of viral
proteins”.However, according to the
authors, “these labels were added when one of the reviewers asked for
them.He felt if would help orient
readers when looking at the figure–the reviewer is correct.We did not determine the identities of the
bands in the particular gel”.(Bess, personal communication).

Since both the “purified HIV” and the “mock” virus contain the same
proteins, one has no choice but to conclude that the 1.16 g/ml band, the
“purified HIV”:

(i)has no HIV proteins
and thus no HIV;

(ii)the proteins used as
antigens in both the ELISA and WB antibody tests are non HIV;

(iii)since the only evidence which is said to
prove that the antibodies presentin the
AIDS patients sera are HIV antibodies is their reaction with the proteins which
band at 1.16 gm/ml and the assumption that they are HIV;and since no HIV proteins are present at this
band;it follows that the AIDS patients
do not have HIV antibodies.

In conclusion, although
evidence exists for a correlation between the antibody tests and AIDS, no
evidence exists which proves that a positive antibody test means HIV infection.